Rock band Weezer honors "Lost" star on new album

<p>Rock band Weezer poses in this undated publicity photo released on August 10, 2010.Handout/Sean Murphy</p>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Lost" may have just ended its six-season run, but one of the TV show's stars is now immortalized on the new album by rock band Weezer.

A headshot of Jorge Garcia, the larger-than-life comic actor who played Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on the castaway series, adorns the cover of the band's upcoming eighth album. The band went one step further, and called the album "Hurley."

"The important thing was that we wanted that picture of Jorge Garcia face on the cover with no words," frontman Rivers Cuomo said in an email to Reuters. "So we just figured that everyone was going to call it Hurley, so that's how it came to be called Hurley."

The album, due in stores on September 14, marks the band's debut for Los Angeles indie punk label Epitaph Records after a 16-year stint on Universal Music Group's Geffen Records label when it enjoyed such hits as "Buddy Holly," "Beverly Hills" and "We Are all on Drugs."

"Our seven record deal with Geffen was up," Cuomo said. "(Epitaph owner) Brett Gurewitz made us an offer we couldn't refuse. He is a fan of the band and was helpful in ... getting the mixing and mastering done at the end of the record. It is cool to have a label head who is also a song writer, in a band, and produces records."

The band owns the "Hurley" masters and is licensing them to Epitaph for five years. The label recently added California hard-rock band Social Distortion to a roster that includes punk rock mainstays such as Rancid and Gurewitz's own Bad Religion.

"It's hard to imagine Weezer doing 'punk, but we're always full of surprises," said Cuomo. "So far Epitaph has just felt like a really great alternative culture, which is perfect for Weezer."

The album's opening track and first single is "Memories," an up-tempo piece of yearning for the good old days "watching all the freaky Dutch kids vomit and then have sex."

"I wrote 'Memories' during a time when the band was taking time off, and I was just feeling really nostalgic about being on the road with the guys," Cuomo said. "I just wanted to be back on the road with the guys. Maybe that's why it has good energy for the opening of the album."

Weezer's touring days aren't as lively now that 40-year-old Cuomo is a married family man. About 10 festival dates in North America and England are on tap through mid-September.

"The way we tour now, we spend most of the week at home in L.A. making music, and then we fly around the country on the weekends and play 2 or 3 shows," he said.